Browsing Posts published by Indelacio

In 2011 the council illegally withheld my benefits for 9+ months resulting in my home being stated as possession being handed over to the landlord in January 2012 stating clearly on the letter that if I left the property at any time they were within their rights to take hold of the property and change the locks, this lead to me being unable to attend jobseekers sessions. Even still after that they didn’t pay any due benefits until months later, ignoring that I had made a rapid re-sign, 3 fresh benefits appications and numerous emails and office visits attempting to get due benefits paid. Even the amount paid months later wasn’t fully due benefits as they had neglected and ignored due benefits that should have been paid and only paid from the latest application, still the LGO doesn’t pay due benefits that should have been owed illegally deducting them from compensation due, also ignoring the knock on effects of being unable to attend jobseekers sessions and the years of my life they left me homeless without putting things right or giving me a home ignoring all attempts to get rehomed and all attempts to get them to put things right.

While they have finally upped the compensation from the pathetic £200 they were offering for losing all of my possessions destroying my life and relationships, leaving me homeless and suffering for over 4 years as well as the months of continued suicide attempts and whatever damaging effects these have had on my body and my brain (I know I have mental failures I never had before) This isn’t fair because the primary point that the government and the council owed me these benefits they were illegally withholding and still never paid them and in fact deduct them effectively stealing them from my compensation and saved significant sums of money by not paying due benefits I would have been entitled to even though I more than likely would have found work during that time period, it is horrible that they can deem what they have done to me be effectively only worth £200 for the 4+ years of my life they’ve stolen. Also the value of the things that I have lost let alone the detrimental effects on my health are worth significantly more than the compensation offered and I have a deep hatred and resentment of the council and the government and what they have done to me that I cannot resolve burning within me which fair compensation would have dissipated but I’ve had to suffer and fight so hard and get so stressed just getting something for what they have done to me, feeling suicidal often and repeatedly throughout the entire process that I need more to put right what they’ve destroyed out of me.

Throughout the entire experience the LGO have been less of a fair ombudsman and more of a council scapegoat giving everything to the council and ignoring the laws and clear evidence in front of their faces, along with the fact that the conservative government removed the ability to get legal aid in these cases around the same time they created these problems on a national scale because this happened to so many more people than me it’s surprising that more hasn’t been done by other nations to combat how illegally this country has acted, and with brexit on the radar now I can only imagine laws being revoked and oppression against young people and the unemployed rising as this country becomes a harder place to live and life becoming more of a struggle.

I continue my fight always even if this is eating me and destroying me, I need fair compensation for what they’ve taken from me and recognition for how much of my life and my soul they’ve destroyed.

I wanted to update you because my gaming pc went out in a literal blaze of glory with the power supply making a huge pop noise with a large white flash of light coming out of the PSU with a blue tinge, it was rather spectacular and something you can’t really plan on recording or recreate, and after this my pc just would not do anything pressing any buttons so I purchased a new power supply hoping to fix this, however the new PSU is a different ampage and does not seem to power up the pc, so there may be further delays in diagnosing what has been destroyed and leading to lower end recording or delays until I get this fixed.

I noticed while trying to replace the power supply that the previous one was so poorly wired that they had built the pc with a 4 pin cpu power supply going into an 8 pin hole, I don’t know what sort of incompetent fool thought this was a good idea and how they’ve managed to get away with selling trash like this, but I can imagine this may have been causing problems I had previously thought associated with the RX480 as the crashing never occurred until I started using that graphics card, so it may have been the fault of the incompetent ebayer all along.

The motherboard connected states itself to be surge proof so there’s a chance it’s just the fuse that needs replacing to make the new psu work with it, however the entire board might be fried and who knows what else which leads to the entire ebay purchase being money thrown in the trash because they built something that would deliberately short circuit and burn itself out, I can imagine that’s a lucrative business for them as they’d expect people to purchase from them again perhaps, however I would never purchase from that seller ever again because of the terrible quality of the build and I would suggest buyer beware ever purchasing anything on ebay, not only are the stats completely misleading and lied about when you’re comparing components on the sale, but also the build is borderline dangerous let alone being suitable for use, just because it boots up doesn’t mean it’s suitable for everyday use. I can’t believe such trash is allowed to be sold on ebay, and I’m still frustrated they removed the correctly deserved negative feedback off that seller, now more deserved than ever before.

I’m working on replacing and fixing this so I can get back to my 2 pc recording setup, and my current one I record off isn’t suitable for high end gaming recording at the moment due to less ram and only 1gb graphics, so you’ll have to excuse a delay in quality content, but hopefully once I’ve fixed this I shouldn’t have crashing issues ever again as more than likely it was how poorly the motherboard was wired with incorrectly used power supplies that caused this entire problem.

What was I doing that caused this explosion you say? Well I was trying once again to record some games that had been known to crash, recording them on the lowest possible settings, and while I got some video’s out (and yes it still crashed on the lowest settings) the final crash was while setting up and not during recording and it crashed as normal, and I went to turn the pc back on as I usually do after a crash, and it was when powering up the pc that simply by pressing the power button it caused the explosive pop (at crotch height YIKES) and as a result wasn’t captured on camera.

I’m being productive in the downtime not able to record gaming by catching up on editing, publishing the backlog of previously recorded content, setting up social accounts for other sites and doing a lot of things like that, as well as getting stressed out still dealing with the councils incompetence.

I’ll be back to recording and publishing soon, and I’ve got a couple of games I’m due to put reviews up for but I want to capture more footage for the edited video’s first, and I want good quality content so I’m waiting til I’ve got this fixed and resolved before getting back to that so I hope you can bear with me for the delays caused by this.

Warden Melody of the undergrowth is an adventure game very much in the style of old zelda games but released on the pc so you don’t need to own a nintendo system to finally play a similar adventure. The game is set over a persistent world where all changes you make stay in the world no matter if you travel to another area or play in another day.

The story revolves around the boy prince being trained and suffering an accident where he falls into a river and is washed up ashore lost and trying to find his way home, he is awoken by nyona who charges him with the task of being the next warden, protector of nature and to stop the king changing the world forever and destroying the balance of nature, but things might not be as they seem as you realise through the story progressing there are two sides to every story.

Along the way you uncover former wardens ghosts who have the ability to take hold of fabians body and then grant new powers and abilities to solve the puzzles. Mostly these powers are used to gain access to new area’s previously off limits, sometimes they just open shortcuts and are a requirement to defeat the boss of that area.

I will suggest that there are a lot of secrets that are never explained through the story progression and there are definitly area’s that were off limits and impossible to figure out how to get into, along with a seemingly pointless completionist task of lighting every single lantern and torch in the game which perhaps upon completion grants something special but I never completed this task. Also there are a plethora of seemingly pointless hats that perhaps when worn in the correct way with the right weapon and warden allow you to talk to the shadow beings you can “Sense” in certain circles, however if you fight them they are gone forever from the world, which could perhaps lead you to never being able to complete everything, unless of course simply eliminating every sense being much like pixel hunting in hotline Miami leads to a greater secret being unlocked such as an extra area or a modification to the ending it’s hard to tell from what is revealed in the game, and while some games like spelunky do this well with a hidden secret until the community finds it as a whole this is something I would like to be able to be uncovered through in game discovery as it feels more like something you should be able to ask in game characters about or find special in game lore that uncovers the secrets.

Having said that though the game itself is really good and definitely a lot of fun and I would recommend 100% that you use a controller as there are points where precise platforming would be required that would be a lot more difficult on keyboard and mouse. I myself put 12 hours into the game with my playthrough with a little exploration and discovery of secrets but mostly on a linear path to the ending as much as the game allows as there are progress gates which require a specific number of motes to be collected, which can lead to going off to find and collect the larger collectables in order to progress so it’s a good idea to collect any you go past on your playthrough if you want to avoid backtracking throughout the game. Travelling between area’s has a convenient fast travel system via a dream world by campfires so this isn’t as awkward as it might otherwise have been.

There are three main area’s all of which have their own guardians and their own unlockable warden forms with individual powers to help traverse the world, and the bosses of each area usually involve using that skill in some form to defeat that boss, and then obviously a final confrontation with whichever final boss you decide to go against, as nature and humanity clash. Your choice however is final as once you defeat the final boss returning to try and do things differently is impossible due to the global nature of in game elements and returning leads to a black screen of death glitch.

I still feel like there’s a lot I didn’t discover and a lot more to unlock with those hidden secrets and all the maths and translation puzzles I didn’t complete, but the in game lore and information about these tends to be lacking so knowing for sure what these would do for you besides complete achievements and give you a sense of completionism is something you would have to discover for yourself, but I do feel there are a few area’s I couldn’t gain access to, with the sewers and perhaps in the hat room, and outstanding lore with the witches who perhaps created the crystals which locked down nyona in the first place.

I would recommend the game and you’ll have plenty of fun with it exploring the game for yourself, the combat feels good and not too easy or too difficult and there’s always something else to do.

If you missed the steam summer sale or didn’t get everything you wanted then the green man gaming summer sale is the place for you, it’s the opportunity to pick up those titles you might have missed out on, or find something new for a reasonable discount. Starting officially on the 19th and lasting for 2 weeks the press release states it to be “the store’s biggest ever event with thousands of games discounted, flash deals, special daily promotions, giveaways and lots more.”

The previous sale had additional bonus discounts for members of GMG once they added items to their cart, and in this manner members are able to get early access to the savings if they add something to their cart today. Other bargains usually available on the summer sale pages include mystery boxes which contain mystery keys which could be randomly for any game available on the site, and they have a variety of DRM codes available for different games.

The promise of giveaways could be in the forums, in the blog‘s or with the VIP pages which usually occur with get them before they’re all snapped up freebies judging by past experience on the site.

Flash deals will be similar to on steam, with a limited time period to take advantage of the discounts available and a variety of daily promotions across several games available every day and usually visible from the main page.

Check out the summer sale over at GreenManGaming for yourself, and you don’t know whether the discounts will be better than you expect unless you go see for yourself, there are usually some rather hefty discounts on a wide range of titles so it’s worth taking a look see if there’s something you’ve been waiting for at the right price.

I have also received a game called stifled from GMG to show off, and I will be doing a playthrough over on my lets play channel, it’s a vr capable title where you’re exploring a first person game, but your vision fades to darkness and you use sound to navigate around, but unseen creatures are hunting you and will listen in to your microphone to find where you are, it’s a very unique game and definitely something I’ll be checking out, and something I wouldn’t have heard of but for getting it from greenManGaming

The main phone that I use is getting fairly old and I’m overdue upgrading to a phone that could run apps and I decided to try out the Vodafone smart 6 because there seems to be a huge leap in price but little difference in specifications besides the outdated operating system.

A lot of features most phones seem to have are irrelevant to me as I have a decent camcorder which I use for recording and don’t really need a great camera on the phone and if I’m accessing the internet I prefer to do things on my pc so that I can actually use a keyboard and type quicker and navigate better so for the most part this is fairly pointless to me and the only thing I would additionally want is to be able to run mobile specific apps and games that you cannot access via the pc.

While the specifications seem to match up to be able to run some apps that I wanted to access like onion force actually running the game it had a tendancy to crash and revert to “desktop” for lack of a better word, and in other games like arcade math pro the inputs were so delayed that you couldn’t really play such a timing based game effectively. I tested out some other games such as matching blocks games and the like as anything beyond simple games just wouldn’t run despite seeming to be within the specifications listed on the product and the amount of space you had to store any apps was severely limited and seemed not to be improved by inserting a memory card for additional storage so if you’re attempting to use this for apps in any way you’re unlikely to be able to have any success which defeats the purpose of it being a smart phone at all and if you’re looking to get a mobile phone one with an easily accessible screen that often unlocks itself in your pocket is not ideal and I would rather return to the days of a flip screen that’s hidden and protected so it doesn’t do unwanted things in your pocket and don’t tell me you haven’t called or had calls from someone not knowing they’ve set off their phone in their pocket it’s happened to everyone.

As a result of this not really working effectively for apps I have been put off purchasing any better phones for using apps and instead opted for a tablet which I will review separately but I’m sure you’ve already seen the unboxing video of by this point. This is part of the problem, if you have to get a tablet to separately do all the things your smartphone should do but isn’t powerful enough to do or lacks the storage for then perhaps phones alone need to revert to just offering the basic phone and text services for those who want a basic phone and don’t need all of these apps as they don’t work anyway on the phone.

At the very least I expect to be able to run fairly common apps and store enough space to have multiple of the essential apps on a smartphone otherwise you’re just needlessly adding features that are unusable anyway, and this phone cannot do the most basic of apps I would expect any smartphone to be able to run and as a result of this I would prefer that it was just a standard phone and offered shielding in my pocket from accidental unlocks and phonecalls.

As a phone yes it works and it does the job, but if you’re looking for a smartphone to use apps and everything you would expect I would suggest you look elsewhere and pay a little more as this is only a phone and that’s all you’ll ever use it for, but if you get this and a tablet it’s probably the most cost effective way of having a phone and access to the apps you want to use.

Floor kids is an interesting twist on the rhythm game, where rather than having to input a precise series of button combinations to a precise timing you have the freedom to express your creativity to the rhythm of the game through 16 different movesets per character and what is stated to be hundreds of transitions between them. Having said that there are a few factors that do influence your scoring on the levels from keeping a rhythm, expressing your creativity, introducing hot moves, pulling off crowd requests in a timely manner and executing the chorus to perfection.

What does this all mean?

Well quite simply it means that while you are free to do whatever you want if you want the best scores you are going to have to try to do your moves to the rhythm of the tune, factor in crowd requests as this will be 1/5th of your score to adapt as quickly as you can to get their unreasonable requested moves pulled off. You do have a little freedom with your move as the 4 different sets have 4 moves and any of those moves within that style of move will work but you will have to account for how quick your character will transition as sometimes it takes longer than the patience of the audience on later levels making this a harder challenge than you would imagine.

The chorus of course twists the entire thing back on it’s head again with actual timing mechanics required to hit the beat on the correct time, that being said you’re still free to press any button to win here, and between each set there is a button mashing segment to hit everything as hard and as fast as you can, which makes getting a perfect score practically impossible for most people here, but still it’s a good segment to take out your frustrations for missing the beats on the previous segment. The chorus’s are pretty infrequent so they won’t be something that eats up your entire time of the gameplay but still count a significant portion of your score if you’re looking to perfect every level.

There are 8 characters all with their own movesets who you have to unlock over 40 different levels so if you want to unlock everyone and do everything there’s a lot of gameplay here as well as online multiplayer dance battles where you take turns to out score your opponent in the same track. Each character has their own specialisations and do have different styles of break dancing expressed through spins as well as holds and floor moves and have their own feel even though the gameplay mechanics remain the same.

I do also like the art style expressed using a hand drawn cartoony style that definitely fits within a break dancing game, and all the characters have their own personalities expressed well which fit their dance move styles expressed so a lot of consideration has been taken in expressing the break dancing genre in a rhythm game rather well.

But Is The Game Fun?

Yes, quite simply. You’re granted a lot of freedom to express yourself however you want, going faster or slower depending on how you’re feeling the rhythm, just don’t stop otherwise your character will literally stand still looking like a lemon in the middle of the dance circle, and you’re free to transition and vary your moves up as much as you want, adding heat and flare wherever you feel it fits and while you’re better off listening to the crowd and trying to hit all of the chorus beats you’re not going to entirely fail the level by ignoring or missing these, and they’re pretty infrequent so you’re not hemmed into following precise inputs to win while having short burts that do fit in because everyone knows the chorus right? And that’s why you’ve got to fit the exact known moves just to win over the crowd, whereas the rest of the song you get to express your creativity.

I enjoy the game and you’re going to have a lot of fun unlocking all of the characters, you might get a little unlucky with unlocks with the cards leaving it later until you get to unlock the majority of the characters, but getting a new character ads variety and you get to enjoy their different movesets and styles if you choose to go back and perfect previous levels to gain access to the final level, and it stands out from other games in the genre being quite different in it’s gameplay mechanics so it’s pretty unique in that aspect.

Having kept my old philips shaver for a number of years which has served me well the time had come to upgrade as it no longer holds charge and can only be used while plugged directly into the mains which isn’t convenient, so I decided the best upgrade option would be another Philips shaver so I purchased a new series 3000 shaver for myself expecting it to work as well as my previous shaver or better.

Having ordered this via amazon I couldn’t guarantee to be in while the delivery would occur especially as it was ordered while I was working my last job where I literally lived in the building only returning home to sleep and recover before leaving for work again the entire day the next day. So while I was out my amazon delivery was “left in a safe place” by the delivery driver, not remotely the safest possible location just left behind the wheely bins and fairly visible by anyone rather than even being hidden inside the top of one of the bins, or placed over the back fence or even put through the letterbox as this would have fit. This wasn’t the worst part however, as I would rather have been able to arrange redelivery on a rare day off but the worst part of this was the disgusting thing I found inside my amazon package and could only have come from someone either the deliverer or at the factory themselves.

Upon opening my package I initially thought it was some form of white tac holding the item in place however upon closer inspection I noticed actually my item was stuck to the delivery packaging with chewed fruity chewing gum that smelt of tropical flavour, considering I only had mint chewing gum it definitely could not have came from me, and it was disgusting to have my item stuck onto the box with someone else’s chewed gum and whatever diseases they probably have and definitely has their mouth bacteria all inside my box.

How Does The Shaver Compare To My Old One?

Having used the shaver for a while I can definitely say I get rather frustrated by the new shaver often feeling like it hasn’t done as good a job at cutting all the hairs I have growing on my face, often leaving several very long hairs just missed that my old shaver would have trimmed, and that if I want to get rid of them effectively I have to go over the whole area again with my old shaver just to get rid of these hairs that stand out.

My old shaver was easier to clean and came with a brush to do so, whereas the series 3000 doesn’t come with a cleaning brush and the internals are much harder to clean and disassemble, and often the top will detach itself from the base while you are trying to clean it or tip out he hair follicle remnants which is ultra annoying because once detached this part is the hardest to get to clip back in.

It is worth noting that the shaver states it is designed to be for wet and dry, whereas my old shaver was only for dry shaving, and this may operate better with shaving foam, however since I dry shave this isn’t something I plan on testing. The shave heads on this are also flexible in 4 directions compared to my old shaver having more fixed heads, this is supposed to achieve a better shave but I find this doesn’t seem to make any difference and instead results in sometimes the shave head getting stuck under the casing and potentially damaging the shaver if pushed in the wrong way.

Overall Impressions of the Series 3000?

While I can see that the packaging suggests it is designed to be more protective and comfortable than regular shaving I would prefer it to be more effective so you don’t have to constantly go over the missed hairs over and over again until finally you get the smooth shave you’re looking for, this isn’t something that would work for me personally and if I had come across this as my shaving option as a kid I would probably have resorted to disposable razers just to get an effective shave, thankfully my original Philips shaver was very effective and served me well for years so I know they can do better, after having tried foil electric razers unsuccessfully.

Cleaning and maintenance of the shaver seems to be a last minute consideration as my previous shaver was designed to effectively be dismantled and restored with ease to keep it clean, this one collects the hairs in an uneven surface where you couldn’t effectively clean, the blades are much harder to take off and restore, and in doing so you can often find yourself resetting the heads wrong or catapulting the top of the shaver across the room as the flimsy clip releases itself.

All in all though the main thing you’re buying the shaver for is to remove facial hair and leave yourself feeling clean and hairless, and this shaver just doesn’t do this effectively, and I know Philips can do better as my previous shaver is from them, and I would give up comfort for an effective and clean shave that just works straight away removing all hairs from stubble to weeklong growth with ease. As this razer does not do this effectively unfortunately I cannot recommend this as an electric shaver, I would suggest finding a working version of my old shaver if you really wanted an effective electric shaver, or suggest disposable blades as they will work far more effectively than this product, that being said there are easy ways they could fix the problem, have the shave heads cut more effectively and not miss all these hairs, redesign the cleaning system so it’s flat inside easier to remove the follicle remnants, and make the top stay attached and the heads easier to remove for maintenance and cleaning.

It’s sad to say that I can’t recommend this product and I would replace it with any working electric shaver that actually removes hairs as well as my previous shaver did.

Juicy Realm is an action shoot em up roguelike over 4 biomes where you have to blast your way through waves of fruit and veg along with some other edibles trying to make your way to find out why all these fruit have become sentient and are at war with humanity.

It’s easy to make comparisons to the binding of Isaac and enter the gungeon, and these similarities aren’t entirely unjustified although the gameplay in this game is room to room rather than being over a procedurally generated floor, and the variety of floors and enemies at least at time of review is rather limited. Don’t put this against the game though as the binding of Isaac first started with a small selection of bosses and enemies and as the game became more popular more and more was added to the game to play on the variety and make sure replayability remained at the top of the agenda.

There are a few things to unlock beginning with additional gameplay characters, but also mid point bonuses between realms that aid you such as the gun shop and the upgrade store from defeating the first two bosses of the game, I’m unsure if there are further unlockables due to the fact that anything you unlocked is not stated or shown in any way and you simply have to discover that you’ve unlocked the extra playable characters on your own, there may be more added to the game as time progresses but even as it stands now it’s a very playable game and very approachable.

I would suggest if you’re an experienced gamer to start on the hardest difficulty if you want to get the most out of the game as it might be a little easier than you would expect but don’t take this as a negative because this game might have been designed for a younger audience with the colourful fruit and veg enemies and the easy gameplay mechanics without complex and numerous varieties of combinations of powers and weaponry.

It is worth considering that the bosses are also very unique each with their own mechanics to be dispatched, with a watermelon who has a hide too thick to be pierced naturally that you have to stun him with explosives and expose his soft innards in order to defeat him, and the method to take down all the bosses have their own mechanics you have to master and learn in order to progress.

The characters themselves have their own powers and unique abilities so they are different to simply cosmetic choices although the main path to victory is finding the best weaponry on your run and ensuring you keep your ammunition and health at suitable enough levels to defeat the game.

Every run in the game traverses four worlds each with their own boss and the length of a run tends to be under an hour of gameplay from start to win even on the hardest difficulty which feels about the right game length especially if they wanted to consider adding daily runs with high scores or fastest times, although the level and enemy variety might want a little adjustment if they were to consider adding such a feature so that runs feel a lot different, but you can understand that there are set groups of enemies in each world and those are the ones that you will always encounter and this isn’t an expensive game and adding such features and variety would take up a lot more work and really require the game to be more expensive than it is, so taking the game as it stands and at the price they ask for the game it’s very reasonable and a game worth a purchase for sure, and if you’re unfamiliar with this style of game it’s a great entrance into the genre as very much a roguelight with some very unique and fun gun styles, and remains a fun action blaster to fight your way through to win.

The storyline could come or go especially as the end of the run seems a little anticlimactic and like the whole lore was pointless and remains unexplained throughout, or like there’s more to be added beyond the dark forests at the end. You won’t be buying the game for the story however, you’ll be playing it for the gameplay and the fun you’ll get out of it and you’ll have fun blasting all the fruit with all of the weaponry available as you discover how to defeat the bosses and work your way to your first victory.

Online privacy and the way your information is being shared by services you use seems to be a major issue lately and while many services have for years used the information you provide to them and use through their services to monetise the platform it seems that because of the mishandling of information and how freely facebook allowed companies to obtain this information through groups on their network the entire internet has been shook up to start being more open with how they hold and use the information they have on you to ensure that you are happy with the way that it is being used.

What began as a series of emails from every company under the sun who have ever had access to my email from ones that I know to ones that I don’t has now turned into an actual privacy checkup from my email provider itself and what I discovered during that privacy checkup was rather concerning with what they do with the information you send through any email and how they gather information about you from the content of your emails and where you send them along with the sheer number of companies both ISA approved and not that they sell this information onto in order to provide targeted advertising and emails direct into your inbox (or spam box)

This lead me to wonder what happens if everyone decides they no longer wish for their information to be shared in this way, would this perhaps make these services unaffordable after all these companies aren’t providing these “free” services out of the goodness of their hearts or any greater act of benevolence, but they are essential services in every aspect of our modern online world and if you have been using a particular service for years you might have linked it to so many of your other online accounts that it becomes invaluable and part of your online identity which you could never afford to lose.

What would you do if you were forced to make a decision between having to pay to keep this essential service or if it was to go offline? I have in the past used a service much greater than facebook before this ever existed which was part of my social online nature eventually renamed to profilenation after it was sued by some other site for using the term “face” in it’s name by a lesser website ironically not even facebook. This service eventually hit monetisation problems when adsense alone couldn’t pay for it’s growing popularity as it was a pioneer in the social networking sector having fully customisable profiles, including the facebook wall before this was ever a thing as well as bulletin board threads which became a big social part of my youth. It was adopted by the alternative youth and social groups I corresponded more with and as a result I felt like I connected more with people there than the countryside I grew up where most people had low intelligence and were criminals and thugs or snobby and rich and wouldn’t associate with me for my lower upbringing so I felt detached and made real friendships and even a relationship with a girl I ended up moving in with from this site.

Towards the end of it’s life profilenation started posting requests to donate due to monetary problems (obviously they never sold off your personal information and resorted only to advertising and eventually attempts to sell increased profile privileges in an attempt to pay for rising hosting costs to cover the traffic) I didn’t believe such a large and popular site could have problems with money and didn’t believe it was ever going to close, and thought “I’m sure they’ll just find cheaper services if necessary” however after a while the site did close down because it was unaffordable as a business to run, and it stands as an example of how anything you use online could eventually vanish. Of course the site eventually returned, a little too late considering facebook is now the primary social site and so feature heavy people are unlikely to revert to a site like this, but had it not closed I believe it could have been bigger than facebook, in fact when I first heard of facebook I suspected it was a return and rebrand of the site due to the fact you had a commentable wall (where on profilenation most profiles had someone comment “first” on their wall as their first post much like youtube video’s today because it was so common on the site for people wanting to be the first comment on a new profile)

Imagine how many services you have linked to your primary email, what happens if your free email service can no longer afford to be run? You might question that this will never ever happen but yahoo have literally just sold their services to oath, and Verizon bought yahoo in 2016. While there might be providers willing to purchase the email services at present if it becomes truly unaffordable without the ability to monetise through selling your personal information these services might eventually be forced into a choice between having to provide your information for sale, purchasing your email services for a monthly fee or having to close down entirely.

What would you do if your email services were forced to close? How many services would you have to update contact details with? How many emails do you have stored that you would permanently lose access to? How would you cope if you lost your primary contact email? I don’t think these are questions anyone ever wants to ask themselves let alone answer, but in a world where privacy is becoming more of a concern you may have to start wondering how much would you be willing to pay for your email services if you were forced to pay for them to keep them online?

You might think there are other options such as hosting an email service yourself but believe me this can be more hassle than it is worth especially when it comes to filtering out generic spam emails sent via a robot to every single permutation of an email and web domain under the sun until it gets a ping, and finding your actual emails amongst all of this can be rather difficult which is why using an established provider tends to be the most popular option rather than using your own domain and it’s why I use a generic provider rather than using my own domain.

With the privacy shakeup as well you might want to check out what information you share with your viewing preferences as services like facebook and google have integrated themselves so far into your browsers that you are always getting “targeted advertising” based upon your viewing history and often tries to get you to purchase an item off amazon or ebay you’ve viewed in the past whether you’ve decided to purchase it or decided I never want to buy that item it will always go hey you looked at this, let us advertise things you’ve already seen rather than anything new you might be interested in but have never heard of which is why I find targeted advertising particularly disgusting as it’s primary purpose is to show off ever website under the sun you’ve browsed and go hey we know you were looking at this.

Consider every site with adsense and every site with a facebook like button, those tendrils are all over the web tracking everywhere you’ve been, and that’s before the cookies advertising services plant anywhere else online and once you take these into account it’s all too clear how much of your browsing data these companies are tracking and that’s before you even consider that using google chrome allows it to see every single thing you look at ever and target advertising around that towards you.

There is an option to disable tracking, however using this service isn’t perfect as most sites will simply turn targeted advertising back on whether you want it or not just by visiting them, and that’s a bad thing because I am happy to get advertising and I always found the non targeted advertising to be far more interesting and perfect for me than targeted advertising ever is, you had more variety of adverts and were more likely to see something new that caught your eye and made you consider a visit to a site, however targeted advertising leads to non stop amazon and ebay “you looked at this” style adverts and 6 kfc adverts in a row on twitch, and other stupid repeats of adverts you clearly have no actual interest in but it’s targeted because of something you’ve visited or expressed a vocal mention of or seen a mention of from your friends.

As a result I would like to disable targeted advertising and just have generic advertising because this works better for me, I see more interesting adverts and I’m of course happy for these sites to monetise their services through advertising and I actually think they’re more effective at advertising something to me when it isn’t something I’ve already seen or expressed some vocal mention of because these things aren’t something I need advertised to me, where as some new wonder product or service I’ve never heard of might be something I’d have an interest in and might be interested in clicking on. I’ve never been one to be interested in repeats and I know it’s a thing in many regular peoples lives that repetition creates a closer connection and brands think if they’re engrained into their thoughts enough people are more likely to feel close to them and buy them but that doesn’t work with me and if you’re constantly in my face I’m actually more likely to be turned off.

So the world is becoming more careful with how it handles your private information and they are trying to ensure they only do what you wish with it, but you must consider the other side of the coin and how if you refuse to allow this information these services might become unaffordable and you might have to look elsewhere or start paying for these services, and this could lead to big changes in the online world so at what cost will having control over your private information hold in the end? That’s a question for another day

Copy kitty is a modern retro action platformer from nuclear strawberry, having spent 7 years in development you can see how much effort has been put into getting this game right at every stage of the game from the sheer weapon variety, through the the many and varied bosses throughout the game.

This game stands out so much that I don’t hesitate to say you must own this game because not only is it a bargain at the price and you’ll get many hours of enjoyment out of it but there are elements that stand out above and beyond any other game in the genre. Many games with projectile weapons tend to be very limited in what they provide, whereas this game has the unique ability of combining many of the basic elements into what seems like hundreds of very different weapons from basic splitting and exploding weapons to super powered swords all of which vary depending on what elements you combine while also having solo weapons that can’t be combined.

The developers seem to have been quite clever getting guest developers in to design the boss battles, this not only helps make sure the boss battles feel very unique and different in style from the rest of the game and other battles, but also ensures you can include some special unique weapons for these battles also. Most developers would tend to have essentially reskinned versions of the same boss throughout with slightly different weaponry and fighting styles but the same repeating evil boss which can add to the identity of an evil you follow throughout the game trying to foil, like bowser or dr robotnik (also known as eggman) and this isn’t missed out entirely in this game either as a repeating miniboss half way through each stage inevitably becomes a greater evil towards the end and holds a following evil that gets more powerful everytime you defeat it, shadowing your copy ability in many ways.

There are two different playable characters and every effort seems to have been made to ensure they both play very differently to ensure much larger replayability when going through the same levels, in relation sonic vs knuckles did have a clever feature where knuckles was able to break through the walls and traverse a very different path through the game eventually leading to different levels and a different ending pioneering branching path’s in the genre this game does stick to the same pathing however because both characters feel very different you might not notice the similarities. Boki essentially is grounded but can gain access to special vehicles at times and has the ability to combine up to three powers together to create very varied and ultra powerful weapons whereas savant only has the ability to combine two powers together and is constrained to shooting them from his coding box. He varies by his ability to fly throughout the level and that his coding box is always separate from him so navigating the level and where your projectiles fire from becomes a bigger challenge throughout the game, also depending on which order you combine the weapons creates a very different outcome.

Another way that savant’s abilities vary is that the way his weaponry combines creates very different projectiles and weapons to what boki would create with the same weaponry, and these differences will make the playthrough feel very different without taking into account the fact that the storyline elements are different when playing through as boki and savant.

Separate to the main quest there is also an “endless” mode where you have to try and defeat 100 waves of enemies which become ever more difficult as you progress with only one life, and includes separate combination bosses to the original game and a hidden secret world unlockable by defeating a specific enemy within this mode. The difficulty of this challenge alone will add many more hours of gameplay to the game and you’ll be wanting to play more so it’s not an unwelcome addition to the game, and if that isn’t enough if you’re feeling up for a true challenge there’s not only harder versions of the main quest but there’s a marathon mode where you can play through the main campaign with only one lifebar and see if you can defeat the entire game without ever leaving it which would be a true challenge considering how many hours of gameplay the game itself has.

A final thought on the art style of the game, where many retro styled games would go down the route of saving graphics going 8 bit ignoring the fact that many retro games actually had very high res cute styles, this game creates a good balance between the high res and low res worlds with enemies having great art styles and very varied natures and looks while the world around can tend to be lower resolution much like the “simulation” world you’re stated to be in, of course it goes beyond this with the inclusion of a glitch world as a nod and homage to old games which would often glitch out and create obscure unintended elements, this game uses it to traverse from the simulation to what may indeed be a different reality in a different dimension which you may or may not be invading and defeating the boss to perhaps free savant from being locked in a simulated prison depending on how you take the storyline. I like that there does seem to be a hidden alternative ending if you give up to the final boss this is a clever feature, and when you’ve traversed the glitch world the nature of the universe seems a lot more realistic, and if you unlock the bonus world the nature of the way the game ends there certainly asks a lot more questions over the nature of the reality of the simulation.

I can’t wait for a sequel to this game, however you may have to wait a long time for this because of how long this took to develop. That being said with more funding and income from the sale of this and the essential ground work already in place a sequel may be able to come far quicker than another 7 year wait but even if it takes so long I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait indeed.

All of these features, with the great variance of gameplay and elements between the worlds and throughout the entire game and for a fantastic price is why this game has earnt an indelacio star, an award that only goes to something that is truly exceptional and goes above and beyond expectations. If you want a very fun and varied action platformer with great gameplay and a fun and cute storyline then this is the game for you and I would suggest everyone should own this.